


Failsafe

by baudlairean



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: AU, Crossover, First Person, Gen, Marvel - Freeform, Post Season 1, Second Person, Spoilers, covering all the bases with perspective, elliot alderson's entire life is a problem, in which stark industries is evil corp, listen it just seemed like a story that was begging for a mutant power discovery scene, of course more characters to be added later this is a marvel crossover, s1 mr. robot spoilers, third person, writing things no one asked for since '15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 04:41:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4815449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baudlairean/pseuds/baudlairean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every powerful machine has a failsafe. Marvel Cinematic Universe Crossover AU. One-shot/Possible TBC</p>
            </blockquote>





	Failsafe

**Author's Note:**

> See end for notes.

**then**

Once, he said he wanted to be Tony Stark. Invent things, change the world. That was a mistake. Every time the boys beat him after that, they laughed and called him Iron Man.

But he could be iron. Anyone could be iron, when tempered, when made hot and cold again, when strengthened by the variation in the temperature, when surviving.

 

Afterward, someone came to talk to his parents. All he remembers is the cherry freezy pop. Dad always kept them in the fridge at the store. Special occasions only, like when he’d sign him out of school early every once in a while. 

Those were always the best days. In the winter, he’d give him dark coffee made in a pot on the hotplate in the back room. He would strain out the grounds by pinching a filter over the mug and pouring through it. The coffee was strong and hot, with lots of sugar and cream. He was young, but he loved it, even if it still seemed bitter. That bright/dark smell and the warmth of the mug in his hands, when it was snowing outside the store, and almost no one came inside, and he sat in the back room with a comic book and watched his dad ring up the occasional customer through the crack in the door. That combination of sensations became his closest touchpoint to nostalgia.

In the summer, the special treat was cherry freezy pops. They were the stick kind that came liquid from the store in a heavy, cheap cardboard box, the kind you froze at home, liquid in a plastic envelope with edges serrated enough to cut the sides of your mouth if you got too greedy. Just sugar, water, and flavoring. Garbage; not food, not even water. Back then, though - heaven.

Dad smuggled one into the hospital for him. He was hooked up to monitors and afraid. The popsicle was mostly melted, back to its first state, but he ate it hungrily. 

In the hall, mom was shouting at someone _not sending my boy to some training ground for freaks_ and drawing attention. He sucked harder on the popsicle, focusing on the fake cherry taste and the effort of squeezing out the chunks of ice while drinking the cool, sweet juice. Dad put a hand on the back of his head, and carefully touched the bruise over his son’s eye with his thumb.

In a year, Elliot would pitch backward out of the window of his room like a boy that could fly. He would wind up in the hospital again, then, and dad wouldn’t be well enough to sneak him a popsicle. Even now, dad looks tired. He’s wan, and his hair is mussed, baseball cap sitting on the creaky plastic chair where his mother was a few minutes ago.

He can’t see who she’s talking to, but she still shouting, tearing up something in her hands. 

 

The police ask him questions. Does he remember? He doesn’t. He doesn’t.

 

At night, in their room, Darlene asks him in the darkness - do you remember?

Not much, he says. Just the burning.

 

They closed down the school, after. What else was there to do? The chaos when that thing came crashing in through the gymnasium caused irreparable damage, and then the incident after destroyed several classrooms. The children were lucky to all escape with their lives. And any place that’s been touched by metahumanity has a stink on it that doesn’t fade.

He’s at another school within a month. No one there knows where he came from. It’s on the other side of town, and they didn’t name him in the news, or put his name in articles. 

No one thanks him. He wouldn’t thank him, if he was them. He is seven years old, and this will hang around his neck forever, and no one will know.

In a year, he will tell his mother that his father has leukemia, and somehow, this will hang even heavier, drag the other weight even lower, matter somehow more. The chaos of that moment will be less, but it will tear things off the shelves in him, it will topple walls. There goes the ceiling, there goes the floor.

 

**now**

7:07 and coffee sloshes over my hand from the disgusting coffeemaker as the new intern slams into me.

I look up. Eyes hollow, and they’re deep set as it is, so it’s got an effect on people I can measure.

The intern was hired yesterday. Now she’s wading through the most insane moment of her career. She’s wearing a black blouse with a ruffle at the collar, and her russet skin almost glows. I’m pale, she looks fresh and healthy, freaked out, but not worn down. She has a hunted look at the corners of her eyes, though. This wasn’t what she signed up for when they told her at the job fair what a great opportunity this would be, what valuable experience she would receive.

“Sorry,” she says. It's the second time, but I wasn't paying attention to the first. Her voice is a little smaller because I haven’t responded. 

“It’s okay,” I say. She hasn’t moved. I look down, and she’s holding a bundle of napkins. She lifts them a little higher, still apologetic, but in a hurry to be somewhere else. 

She’s still talking, even though I told her it was fine. “Sorry, it’s been such an insane day. Obviously - you know. I mean, it’s crazy. Let me -”

Before she can press the knot of napkins to my right hand, I take them from her with my left.

She pulls back again, moving sideways, already moving on, thinking about where she’s going. “So sorry.”

She disappears into the flow of people in the hall. 

The break room is an oasis of bad florescent lighting and stale coffee smell, but the hallway outside is insanity. You can hear the Wagner, if you listen closely enough to the fever pitch of shouted conversation. People are running past each other, and two well-dressed men are in a screaming match on the other end of the floor. Everyone is doing things, things to make themselves feel busy and useful, but no one really knows what would _help_. The headless chicken is sprinting around the yard spouting numbers, repeating the status of downed networks, rattling off the latest confirmations. Yes, all the backups are gone. No, the tech team doesn’t think we can recover the data. Yes, China isn’t responding.

I walk into the hall. I don’t usually like being in a flow of people, but this is a different feeling. Now I’m the island, holding a coffee mug to make myself inconspicuous, and traffic flows around me.

I’m wearing my hoodie. Not dress code, but no one notices. No one cares. Down at the other end of the office, past the long ranks of windows, I see a manager straighten and shout into an office with a closed door. “Ms. Potts, Line 4.” She hangs up on her end and hustles back in my direction. She doesn’t see me. I’m the eye.

Some of the employees, shell-shocked business casual, are staring up at the monitor mounted on the wall. On it, a man with mirrored sunglasses is flashing a quick peace sign to a crowd of reporters and climbing into a black car without a comment. 

Now I’m standing beside them, looking up. At some point, I walked over. I didn’t notice. 

“Mr. Stark!” shout the reporters. “What does this mean for your international concerns? What is your company doing to find who caused this? How do you feel about its effect on the world economy?”

The man with the mirrored sunglasses sits behind the dark window of his car. He smiles like everything is normal, that big cheesy grin he always has. The saving the world grin. The Forbes 100 grin. The Avenging grin.

No one gets their questions answered. They cut back to the reporter at the desk. Does she know she’s a dinosaur? This is her shining moment. For once, nobody can check for a live feed or a trending hashtag to find out what’s happening - they have to watch the news, like they used to. No Stark phones have a 4G connection, and internet access? Sporadic at best. They say it’ll be back tomorrow. They still don’t know for sure.

“Well, there you have it. So far there has been no comment from Stark Industries CEO Tony Stark, or from CFO Pepper Potts. No statement has been issued by the corporation, nor has any press conference thus far been scheduled, as of 7:10 AM, Eastern time. We’ll keep you up to date on any word from Stark Industries explaining the catastrophic collapse of their information systems' architecture this morning, which has left the global banking structure apparently without records, possibly permanently. Many areas serviced by Stark are also suffering from internet outages and lack of phone service at press time. More -”

I am heading for the door. He’s not here. 

 

Oh.

Do I need to explain? Did you think we were going third person with this? No. You’re my imaginary friend. I built you. We’re in this together. I found that out in Times Square. For better or for worse, you’re the only one who’s on my side, and we have to go at this in the first person.

 

It’s after midnight by the time I get home. I can hear the rioting outside. Internet’s coming back up, slowly, but all signs point to those pesky records being permanently wiped. Some kind of issue at the data centers, apparently. All of them.

I should be celebrating. I should be happy. But I’m split into pieces inside, and all I can do is watch the streams, half-asleep, wondering how long it will take until I go away completely.

It’s a possibility, right? You have to admit it. A number of powerful personalities battling for prominence in one lightly used head. It’s not going to end well, and I might be the casualty. 

In the end, it doesn’t matter what happens to me. Not anymore. I set this thing in motion. We did. All of us. Now all there is to do is watch.

I’m starting to get that feeling again.

It’s a feeling ( _burning, rising, falling back_ ) I’ve known since I was seven years old. I don’t know where it comes from, and I don’t really remember what happens if it ever hits a peak ( _cresting higher, cresting higher, like tsunamis off the earthquake_ ) but I’ve never waited around to see.

I get up. I move. Sometimes that helps, but my chest is constricted and I can’t breathe, and that fucking asshole hasn’t shown up to give me a pep talk or tell me what this is. Maybe he doesn’t know. Wouldn’t that be fucked up? If even he didn’t know what this was?

It’s getting more intense. This is what the morphine was for. It kept a baseline, kept it low, beat back the loneliness and _this_ , the out of control feeling that makes me feel like putting my fist through a wall. It threatens me with something I want, but I can’t have. I can tell it would be a release of something bottled tight and low. It's like the wash of anxiety, but worse, more intense, a pressure like something alien in my chest.

Check my phone. Angela called when the service came back, six times, left as many messages. Should I call her? I should call her.

No, I shouldn’t, I can’t. I’ll handle it. I’ll handle it. I _contain multitudes_ , right? One of them must know how to fucking _stop_ this. You? Is it you?

Nobody’s coming. I’ve got my hands in my hair, and I can hear the rioting getting worse outside. The feeling, it’s high as a knot in the back of my throat, choking me out.

Flipper’s freaked out, snuffling at my feet. I back up - don’t want him anywhere near me right now, don’t want to do something to him by mistake - and trip.

 

It’s like this morning, with the coffee. It’s just an accident, just what happens when you move too fast without thinking, when you release the mechanism in your brain that controls for your behavior. My back foot catches on Flipper, and I make a sound that isn’t very dignified, no harm done, and I’m moving very slowly in time, and I slam a hand down on my tower to steady myself and keep from hitting the floor and then it just _goes_ out of my hand, a drag from the inside to the tips of my fingers like a freight train just burst from my chest, and whatever it is, it flows down through the circuits and wires and lights my brain live as an overloaded Christmas tree with the bulbs shattering into shards of colored glass. It flows with purpose, distinct as a swollen river, channeled down the line, through the tower, roasting it from the inside, then into the wall, then outside, skittering across brick, blackening cement, the wire behind crackling and popping and turning leathery and dark as a tree branch as this mote of light, this instant of being, this explosive _thing_ I am in and am with goes into the ground and up into the power line and bursts into the transformer and is gone.

I pull my hand from the tower, rictus tight. The fingers won’t move.

Outside, New York goes dark.

 

I’m lying flat on my back, and something warm and soft is on my cheek. Warm, soft, wet. Flipper. Hey, stop. Can’t find my voice to make him quit it. Can’t lift my head, but someone is banging on the floor.

Hey, Flipper. Quit it. It’s dusty down here, and my head aches. I can’t hear anything. Vision is a smooth, easy blur. The knocking goes on, but I’m dreaming. The door, that's it, not the floor. They're banging on the door. Anyway, Shayla never comes around at night, after all, and she wouldn’t bug me this late. I have rules. It's definitely a dream.

“Mr. Alderson?” 

I’m fried. This is better than morphine. I’m warm and comfortable even though my head aches. It’s a high that goes down to my heels, softening everything. I don’t mind what I found out yesterday. I don’t mind that I kissed Darlene, or what Angela knows. I don't mind I don't mind I don't mind.

Everything is right. Every decision is good, no regrets, and my neurons are fizzing and popping, flooded with the good brain chemicals, the fun ones every therapist I’ve ever seen has told me I'm short on. 

Hey, this is _great_. Seriously, have you tried this? I don't know what it is, but nothing I've ever been on has made me feel this good. People outside on the street are screaming, and I can hear smashed glass. It’s great. Everything is going to turn out for the best. I’m fine, and I’m happy without needing to explain it to myself, like someone unlocked the cell I’ve been in my whole life and let me walk out.

They’re banging on the door now. I’m not moving. I think maybe lying on the floor did this to me - makes as much sense as anything else, doesn’t it? I should have started sleeping down here a long time ago.

I get my arm moving again. It seems like a lot of work, but I raise it high enough to scratch Flipper between the ears. My fingernails are charcoal black. The door opens with a sharp crack as the lock splits from the frame.

Everything is going to be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks goes to this stupid show for ruining my life, cyberpunk bullshit for sending me down this road, my inescapable urge to write fic that will never be finished, and my passion for aus no one has requested. I wrote this purely to explore the idea and have some fun worldbuilding this particular mashup. Not a clue if I'll continue after that cliffhanger - but if you are interested, I would like to hear about it. Tumblr post [here](http://baudlairean.tumblr.com/post/129260285010/fic-failsafe).


End file.
